In recent years, with westernization of diets, patients of lifestyle-related diseases are increasing and resulting in serious medical and social problems. At present, in Japan, the number of diabetic patients is 8,000,000. It is also said that the number of diabetic patients plus pre-diabetic patients reaches 20,000,000. The three main complications of diabetes are “retinopathy, nephropathy, and neuropathy”. Diabetes is also a cause for arteriosclerosis. Furthermore, diabetes may cause heart diseases and brain diseases.
A person develops diabetes in such a manner that improper diets and life styles, secretion from fat cells due to fatness, or oxidative stress decreases the function of pancreas, causing shortage of insulin that controls a blood glucose level or reducing the effect of insulin. Diabetes has symptoms such as frequent urination, an increased amount of urination, and increased thirst. However, such symptoms may not enable patients to realize that they have developed diabetes, and most patients know their illness when they undergo examination in hospitals, etc. This explains why there are so many “silent” diabetic patients.
At the stage where abnormal symptoms resulting from the complications of diabetes are found in hospitals, etc., conditions of the disease have advanced too far, making it difficult to completely cure the disease. In particular, many of the complications of diabetes are difficult to cure, and therefore prevention of diabetes is considered as important as many other life-style related diseases. For the prevention, early identification and early determination of therapeutic effect are essential, and there are many inspections for diabetes for that purpose.
In a situation where blood contains abnormal amounts of carbohydrates and lipids therein, protein reacts with the carbohydrates and the lipids so that AGEs (Advanced Glycation Endproducts) are produced. AGEs are end products produced via non-enzymatic glycosylation reaction of protein (Maillard reaction). AGEs emit fluorescence and form crosslinks by bonding to nearby proteins.
AGEs are considered to be directly deposited on and infused into blood vessel walls or to interact with macrophage which is a part of an immune system, to thereby release cytokine that is one type of protein and to cause inflammation, resulting in arteriosclerosis.
Diabetic patients are concurrently associated with disorder of the kidney in many cases if they do not receive any medial treatment after the onset of diabetic. Therefore, the diabetic patients are required to receive treatment with artificial dialysis. In such artificial dialysis, it is preferable to remove not only target substances that have been removed so far by the artificial dialysis, but also AGEs with the view of preventing the above-mentioned diseases attributable to AGEs. PTL 1 discusses the problem that AGEs are accumulated in peritoneal tissues with peritoneal dialysis, which is one method of the artificial dialysis. PTL 2 discloses an absorbent capable of adsorbing and removing glycation-denatured protein that is contained in a body fluid.